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"Your account stopped syncing during an update" error on desktop app on Windows

I am on Windows 11, latest release and my Dropbox is also stuck on updating. The Dropbox version is the same. I am also receiving an error that I have not received before. I have stopped SnagIt, but in order to stop Windows Explorer, I would have to restart my PC.

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jdc_smiley

Hello all,
I'm having a syncing issue after the recent update.
I'm getting error message that account stopped syncing due to some files are being used by other applications.
No files or applications were open during the update.
Also, I have restarted the machine a few times now, even with logged off from Dropbox as the notes suggested in case you have this error.
Obviously I can't rename or delete the folders as step 3 suggesting.
Any Ideas ?
Thank you.

Hannah

Thanks @PapaNinjago and @jdc_smiley for bringing this to our attention.

@PapaNinjago, if you haven't already, please make sure to restart your computer, to see if that helps.

As for you, @jdc_smiley, do you have a Dropbox icon in your system tray?

If so, please hover over it and let me know what you see.

sinokgr

Hello Hannah, thanks for getting back.
As a matter of fact I went through chat and suggested me to uninstall & reinstall windows app.
It seems like it's trying to sync now, the current status is ''indexing''.
So hopefully might be ok at some point.

Jean361

Our company has 24 people that have Window 11 and Dropbox and all are having "Your account stopped syncing during an update because some files are being used by other applications" The weird thing is, we can't access the dropbox folder that is on the laptops. Plus Explore is have problem also. And some employee are off site and still have the same problems. We have restarted the laptops and same thing.

Nancy

@Jean361, did you all start having this issue after a specific update? What’s the Dropbox app version you’re running on your devices?

Finally, can you send me a screenshot of what you see, when trying to access your local Dropbox folder?

XionicFire

We have this exact same problem, except I'm not sure how they get to the error windows, ours has been stuck in:

"Updating Dropbox account..." since the update, no error no nothing, if we try to hit pause it just stays on "Pausing" does not do anything, if we restart its the same deal.

All our servers and every single users laptop is like this, this update literally broke our entire company, we depended on Dropbox for basically all company file collaboration and it has now been stopped dead.

Deleting and uninstalling then re-downloading multiple terabytes on 53 machines is not a solution and if we have to do it, were not doing it on Dropbox anymore.

Whom ever decided this update was a good idea should be fired, I know I'm really close to being fired due to this fiasco, i had planned for the update, just remake all the main IT accounts folders as team folders and move everything back to where it was but this is a whole other level of FUBAR.

You could have left the files as they were and just have all new files from here on follow the new design but this stupidity of force moving MILLIONS of files without an opt in for your customers is shortsighted at best negligent at worst.

Were running a business here, you cannot suddenly force change all folders and files locations without letting us do it manually and slowly, there's applications that point to locations on the Dropbox folder structure, apps that have specific links to file locations on servers moved to other folders and now are failing to backup or log data, throwing all kinds of errors, production servers are stopping because they are "unable to find application path" its a royal effed up train wreck.

Now there's dozens of employees who no longer have access to files, they cant find them because they have moved, their usual opening excel and clicking on the file no longer works because it moved location, and they are too stupid to understand they have to look for it somewhere else, our ticketing system basically crashed with requests overnight, seriously amateur hour over there guys, who's authorizing your production updates? an 18 year old that never took his it operations 101 class?

I have my entire IT staff currently scrambling for solutions, we have started to download Sync.com and migrating the critical files there and haphazardly restoring what ever semblance of service we can, I had to throw Dropbox under the bus to save my and my whole it staff's jobs, I've pushed for the company to stick with Dropbox for more than a decade, the unlimited space removal was a mortal wound I was trying to recover from, but this is just the final nail in the coffin.

Unless this change is reversed somehow were not going to rework all the machines to stick back on Dropbox, we were already looking for other unlimited alternative solutions, this basically sealed Dropbox's fate.

We were even exited about the upgrade because it was one of the few upgrades where Dropbox added useful functionality instead of useless "added value apps" no one asked for, then they go and do this.

We tried Dropbox, we really did, but you just don't want to help yourself.

XionicFire

Nancy what do you mean "what update"? its THE update, the only update ever on Dropbox history that is so large they had to shutdown service for an hour to perform it, never in our time here (and we've been here since almost day 1) had we seen Dropbox needed to suspend service for an update, it was that big, so there's no way you guys don't know what update were talking about

The problem is simple, Dropbox is trying to move files or folders that are currently in use, and cannot, hence its stuck there, just trying forever to move them, but it cant so service cannot be restored until it does, and again, since it cant, it just stays there stuck forever.

We also cannot see what files its having trouble moving, at least on our side it just stayed stuck on "Updating Dropbox account..." no errors, no messages, no nothing.

Dropbox needs to move what ever files it can, then NOT move the ones it cant, so we can figure out what's causing the problem and manually fix it.

Some of us had our employees windows desktop/documents folders pointing to a folder inside Dropbox, others had production level apps running directly off of the Dropbox folder.

Any of these could be causing the problem, but we cannot shutdown production servers for a day just to "find out why dropbox is not syncing"

We need some sort of fix for this, and I'm sad to say we're not the ones being paid to fix it, you guys are.

mthomas

Same problem here. Endless loops.

However, here's what's been working for me:

Uninstall the desktop app.

Clear temp files. Delete cache, etc.

Reinstall app.

Go through the painful process of re-syncing (2Tb for us)

Remove dups that are no longer connected to account, conflicts, etc.

Seems simple but's its been working. My notebook (we have workstations and notebooks for mobile) converted fine but the main difference is that it was set to online only due to space issues. I wish Dropbox would have made that recommendation beforehand.

Hope this helps...

XionicFire

oh yeah and gotta love the "own name" folder, clearly whom ever thought of that did not think it through

our projects all have large fie names, once windows reaches 255 characters on the folder path funky things happen.

When dropbox went from \Dropbox to \Dropbox (Company name) it was a royal mess, we had to rename our company to W so the path was as small as possible, the space between dropbox and the (W) meant we had to rewrite all our existing scripts to support "spaces" in the path name, its funny how they think everyone is called "John Smith", now we have folders like "D:\Dropbox (W)\Cherry T. Chevapravatdumrong" (not a fake name, its a real person, google it), or better yet "D:\Dropbox (W)\Azucena María Lorena Treviño de los Ángeles" nothing automated scripts love more than super long folder names with lots of spaces and non standard characters

Now we had to rename EVERY USER to their system USERNAME because of course in true Dropbox fashion we cannot change the user folder name.

So now our folders look like: "D:\Dropbox (W)\AMLTrevino", users don't like it and all the collaboration tools now have these kinds of names, which is not ideal but at least the scripts work again.

Windows figured this out way back in windows XP, where your USERNAME is not the same as your name, because well, 95% of the names in the world are either too long or too complex for computers to handle efficiently, so then use a username.

Seems the person who thought of this at dropbox missed this class at school or has never worked an IT desk in his life, if he had he would have known Actual person names and working folders DO NOT MIX.... EVER.....

Oh and it will be lovely when the accounting lady leaves and we have to rename the accounting account to whom ever's new name comes along, we love spending our weekends editing and debugging scripts because dropbox doesn't understand the concept of usernames on working file structures.

Great job guys, well done.

XionicFire

5 days app still critically broken, still says "Updating Dropbox account...", so im going to go ahead and effectively assume this is a "were not fixing it" issue and moving along

XionicFire

Ok info for those stuck with this problem, heres how we fixed it.

The issue is windows explorer is using files that dropbox is trying to move, so until it does it will not finish

So what we did is we remade all the critical folders in the root folder of dropbox as team folders with the exact same names and permissions they had, then logged in to dropbox web to move all files from the User folder into individual Dropbox > Team folders to minimize impact of the change

Once all critical files are moved to their proper places, download process explorer from microsoft, then copy it somewhere (outside dropbox), run it, tell it to replace task manager.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL

Select TASK MANAGER from the list

Process explorer should now open instead of the windows task manager.

Look any iteration of for Explorer.exe, right click and select Kill Process Tree (or SHIFT+DEL)

Once it closes, it "should" stay closed, if not then its a whole different problem, but if it does then:

Run dropbox from the process explorer window:

File=>RUN, then type:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe"

on the "Run" box

Dropbox will open, and start doing its thing, there will be no way to check when its done directly, the best way we found is click on File=>RUN again, go to the dropbox folder, you should see the sync icons show that its doing things, when the icon on the folders inside the main dropbox folder (where ever you put it) changes to a green checkbox or gray cloud or white/green checkbox its done. (alternatively you can use resmon.exe to check for disk activity from dropbox.exe if you know how to use it)

When its done, click again on File=>RUN, but this time type:

C:\Windows\explorer.exe

The dropbox window should pop up now, and all the changes should be done, follow the prompts on the dropbox app and proceed to fix the mess it just made.

At least now its syncing again....

Now to re-point all the broken symlinks and edit all the scripts, debug all the servers and deal with the panicked users that cant find any of their files.

Thanks dropbox! we really needed this pile of horse steaming cakes on our already over worked staff, we totally dig it!